


Short Thing

by yeaka



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-18
Updated: 2014-04-18
Packaged: 2018-01-19 19:59:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1482094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yeaka/pseuds/yeaka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim makes a grave mistake.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Short Thing

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don’t own Star Trek or any of its contents, and I’m not making any money off this.

“...But it’s _my_ face,” Jim points out, straining the words and gesturing uselessly with his hands, well aware that his rampant emotion isn’t going to get him anywhere. Spock’s a neutral island in the middle of an infuriating sea, and he merely lifts an eyebrow.

“I was not suggesting otherwise.” Though Spock’s voice is much calmer than Jim’s, there’s a twitch in it that anyone else might miss. Jim knows his first officer better than that; they’re both exasperated. Rather than dropping it so they can continue down the hall to the conference, Spock reiterates, “I was merely expressing my personal displeasure.”

“Of my face.”

“Of your face with a mustache.”

“My brother has a glorious mustache and he’s as handsome a man as ever walked the Earth, just like any Kirk, with or without facial hair.” Even as Jim talks, he can feel his hand gravitating back to his face, idly stroking the bare beginnings of hair that have taken him a week to grow. Evidently, Spock has no appreciate of true beauty.

Spock replies dryly, “As I have no intention of dating your brother, that is of little relevance here.”

Somehow, Jim winds up blurting, “You’d be _lucky_ to have my brother.” Which he doesn’t at all mean, because the thought of Sam and Spock together literally makes his stomach turn. Maybe just to cover that up with heaping distraction, Jim rolls on, “And anyway, that’s not what you said—you asked me to shave it, and you haven’t even really _tried_ it—it’s not even fully grown in yet! Maybe it’ll look great when it’s blooming right! You never complain about Bones’ stubble. Besides—” But he cuts off abruptly when his eye-roll finally takes his gaze off Spock’s face, to where Sarek is standing at the end of the corridor.

Sarek’s stopped dead, as well he should, having stumbled upon his son and the captain escorting him in the midst of an utterly ridiculous argument. Jim’s cheeks are red in seconds, probably clashing horribly with his dress uniform. Spock’s father looks the picture of an Ambassador, and Jim suddenly feels very, very small.

But Spock, facing the other way, has no inclination of this, and simply answers, “As I am not in the habit of kissing Dr. McCoy, that is of equally little relevance. If you must know, it now tickles when I kiss you, and I do not find that an appropriate sensation.”

Jim almost grumbles over the insane Vulcan notion of which sensations are appropriate, but instead he hangs his head, shaking it and muttering, “Sarek.”

“I believe my father would approve of your facial hair even less.”

“He is correct,” Sarek announces. Perhaps sensing the end of the ‘conversation,’ Sarek strolls forward. The fact that he disapproves of Jim’s sorry excuse for a mustache doesn’t even register at this point. Spock looks around, mildly surprised, but it changes nothing.

Sarek gracefully passes them, headed for the conference room. Under his breath, Jim mutters bitterly to his first officer, “And you wonder why I worry he’ll think I’m not good enough.”

As though the entire ordeal never happened, Spock simply entwines their hands together and begins to lead Jim after his father, assuring just as quietly, “ _That_ is an argument you will never win.”


End file.
